Development, Diversification, and Legitimacy: Emergence of the Committee-Based Administrative Model in South Korea

Recently, a committee-based policy making model has become an important element of South Korea’s administrative toolkit. However, most scholars and politicians recognize the inefficiency of this type of decision-making model. Why, then, does the committee-based model continue to gain traction? Taking an institutional perspective, this paper details the processes at work in the legitimation of administrative models in the Korean context, and proposes a framework for understanding how the committee-based system has become predominant. Korea’s rapid development over the past half-century has led to the diversification of groups from whom the government must seek legitimacy, and it is argued that the committee-based system continues to be adopted due to its ability to incorporate these diverse voices into the policy making process, while at the same time allowing the government to further its developmental agenda. The implications of this study for understanding the processes of administrative development are discussed. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.